In an Education Week commentary on the value of social-emotional learning, Timothy P. Shriver & John M. Bridgeland wrote:
Somehow, we came to think of emotion and relationship as tangential to knowledge acquisition. Somehow, we thought we could learn, become productive, and be successful without engaging our social and emotional lives.
This is not the case of nine 2017 Fund for Teachers grant recipients. Two teams and one individual chose to pursue social-emotional learning (SEL) on their fellowships this summer. These Fellows realize the integral role mental health plays in academic achievement and are dedicated to addressing the former to advance the latter.
Mitchell McCann and Jazmine Salach (KIPP Endeavor Academy - Kansas City, MO) will investigate trauma intervention strategies at the 15th European Congress of Psychology Conference in Amsterdam to better understand differentiated instruction and help students who've experienced trauma achieve successful academically and personally.
“Having worked throughout Kansas City, we’ve had countless students who are encountering one or more forms of trauma on a daily basis, with ranges of our students identified as homeless, experiencing abuse, or in foster care,” wrote McCann and Salach in their grant proposal. “Teachers and counselors are not equipped with the resources or instructional and interpersonal strategies necessary to properly assist students experiencing trauma; therefore, our mission is to combat generations of discriminatory practices and disenfranchisement that have left communities unjustly behind and instruct all students with the same rigor and high expectations to ensure success to and through college.”
McCann and Salach will spend two days meeting with professors from the Child Development and Education Department at the University of Amsterdam to discuss intervention strategies before attending the five-day conference. Exhibits, breakout sessions, presentations and networking opportunities will help them create lesson plans that nurture students academically and emotionally. They are most interested in the “Life-Changing Events” track that focuses on migration, immigration and adaptation -- issues particularly relevant for their students.
“Teachers are trained on how to enrich high-achieving and remediate low-performing students; however, there is a vast dichotomy between time put in instructing these students and time spent on truly identifying the events that brought them there to more effectively lift them up to their potential,” said McCann and Salach. “This fellowship is an opportunity to make education accessible in ways that heal students experiencing trauma and successfully lead them to their goals.”
Closer to home, the Sutherlin, OR, team of Brenda Teske, Shannon Grauf, Catherine Libolt and Jennifer Ball will attend the Conscious Discipline Summer Institute in Little Rock, AR, to counteract stress and trauma prevalent in their school community and improve students' readiness and resiliency by teaching emotional regulation and problem solving skills.
“Over the past several years we have seen a dramatic increase in the number of students entering our school system with significant mental health needs,” wrote the team in their grant proposal. “Recent research has shown the effects that Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES) have on a child’s developing brain (a parent with mental illness, death of a parent, drug use, divorce, abuse, and/or neglect). The more ACES, the more likely a person is to have negative mental and physical outcomes -- and our county’s health outcomes are among the worst in the state.”
This team is working toward their school’s journey to be “trauma informed” by learning from Dr. Becky Bailey and her Conscious Discipline program on their fellowship. With deeper understanding and practical experience, the team plans to create a school-wide implementation strategy and serve as a “model school” for their district and others.
Lastly, Sasha Agarwal (Academy for Careers in Television and Film - Elmhurst, NY) designed her Fund for Teachers fellowship to learn mindfulness techniques at a professional development retreat in Bali and innovate a unique curriculum that supports SEL needs of older, at-risk, urban youth in the midst of trauma.
“I teach English Language Arts at an ungraded, alternative, transfer high school for a diverse population of at-risk, inner-city, formerly incarcerated youths who are overage (17-21), under-credited, formerly incarcerated or battling substance abuse and performing below grade-level,” explained Agarwal. “My fellowship will address acquiring the resources and learning the concepts never taught in my education studies and never mentioned in my professional development, but which I need in order to be an effective teacher, namely:
* how to empower myself with greater ability to model self-regulation, self-awareness and to utilize my compassion more effectively in working with youth in trauma, and,
* how to instruct students in self-awareness, self-advocacy and presence, so they have the skills they need to manage underlying emotional stress which, left untamed, cause so many of the negative elements ultimately impeding academic success.”
Agarwal says that her students energize and inspire her, but that she cannot successfully motivate them without tremendous compassion, patience, enthusiasm and creativity. So while her learning directly benefits students, she also believes this fellowship will restore her energy and develop her skills to ensure her work is not only highly effective, but also sustainable for years to come.
A survey of teachers commissioned by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning found that 93 percent of teachers want a greater focus on social and emotional learning in schools. Fund for Teachers is so pleased that these Fellows will bring this focus to their learning environments this fall and beyond.